Welcome Information Connoisseurs

Monday, August 17, 2015

Your editor briefly stopped by the Independent Idaho Republicans conference held at a local hotel here in Coeur d’Alene over the weekend. The meeting might just as well have billed itself as Usurers Inc. or Shylock and Co., so numerous were the members of the Birchers, Mormons, Ludwig Von Mises Austrian School of Economics and Ayn Rand institute for enlightened godless selfishness. (Like Rand, Von Mises also detested Christ). Not one of them was familiar with 1500 years of Christian teaching against profiting from loans. Independent Idaho Republicans is a front for the kind of dog-eat-dog, predatory capitalist society that dumps unwanted children in abortion dumpsters. Idaho’s legal rate of usury is more than 450% on loans. These “patriots" could not care less. Usury simply is not an issue for them. In their indoctrinated minds, to restrict usury would be “socialism.”

These people are dupes of the plutocracy. The Conservative movement is lost in the money vault of its own grasping avarice. “Conservatives" worship a God-forsaken idol, “The Market.” If these “Conservatives” ruled America, nothing about the reign of the love of money would change. And what else matters in comparison?

We do not recognize usurers or usury-enablers as allies. For fifteen hundred years Christian civilization believed as we do. The First Revolution was the one that made profit on loans legal and moral, thereby making parasites (bankers and “wealth managers”) supreme over most creators: farmers, manufacturers, inventors, scientists, builders, mechanics, teachers, poets, writers and cognate vocations. Most in the latter category cannot accumulate wealth like usurers can. Hence, the Money Power becomes the supreme power in the land while “Conservatives" chase after symptoms, rather than this root of evil.

The following set of DVDs will help to educate men and women of good will who dwell in enforced ignorance on this vital subject. These DVDs are a relatively quick and painless way to learn the suppressed basis of western civilization and what made it great: the subjugation of the Money Power, which is the most important campaign of our time. Every other issue is a palliative in comparison, because all evil emanates from the Love of Money and from perverse defiance of and disobedience to the Words Jesus Christ clearly stated (Luke 6:30-36). How can we be blessed when the Austrian School of Economics continues to triumph over the Nazareth school, among the Right wing? If you think there are New Testament quotes that justify taking profit from loans, think again. These revisionist history DVDs prove otherwise— and much more concerning medieval theology, Renaissance banking in Italy and Germany, and other learned topics vital to your understanding.

DVDs: Catholics, Protestants and Usury in the Renaissance and Early Modern Europe:

A College-level Course in the Christian Theology of Money in Under Two Hours

In this fascinating lecture, given at Lansing Michigan in April of 2015, historian Michael Hoffman covers the contents of his book Usury in Christendom: The Mortal Sin that Was and Now is Not and answers challenging questions from the audience. Here is a unique opportunity to learn and understand what Christ, the Bible, the medieval thinkers and the Church taught about profit from loans and how that sacred doctrine, faithfully upheld for nearly 1500 years, was first overthrown by the situation ethics of revolutionary change agents within the Church of Rome. Hoffman’s history of how God’s law was slowly whittled away and how usurious bankers began to choose the personnel of the Church at the highest levels, represents a fascinating rebuttal to the laissez-faire Shylock economics which today controls the Conservative movement, the Church of Rome and most Protestant churches, rendering us powerless against our plutocratic enemies and making a mockery of true Christianity. Set of two all-regionDVDs. In color and digitally recorded before a live audience. Approximately two hours.

"It truly amazes me how you are able to deliver so much information in such a short space of time, and yet with such accuracy and in accord with all of the pasages in Scripture which pertain. You not only have studied the documentary record of history in great detail, you have also not missed the important parts of the historical narrative... And your oral delivery is flawless." — Daniel Krynicki, Michigan

WASHINGTON — President Obama had a tough message for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or Aipac, the powerful pro-Israel group that is furiously campaigning against the Iran nuclear accord, when he met with two of its leaders at the White House this week. The president accused Aipac of spending millions of dollars in advertising against the deal and spreading false claims about it, people in the meeting recalled. So Mr. Obama told the Aipac leaders that he intended to hit back hard. The remarks reflected an unusually sharp rupture between a sitting American president and the most potent pro-Israel lobbying group, which was founded in 1951 a few years after the birth of Israel.

The next day in a speech at American University, Mr. Obama denounced the deal’s opponents as “lobbyists” doling out millions of dollars to trumpet the same hawkish rhetoric that had led the United States into war with Iraq. The president never mentioned Aipac by name, but his target was unmistakable.

The next day in a speech at American University, Mr. Obama denounced the deal’s opponents as “lobbyists” doling out millions of dollars to trumpet the same hawkish rhetoric that had led the United States into war with Iraq. The president never mentioned Aipac by name, but his target was unmistakable. WASHINGTON — President Obama had a tough message for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or Aipac, the powerful pro-Israel group that is furiously campaigning against the Iran nuclear accord, when he met with two of its leaders at the White House this week. The president accused Aipac of spending millions of dollars in advertising against the deal and spreading false claims about it, people in the meeting recalled. So Mr. Obama told the Aipac leaders that he intended to hit back hard. The remarks reflected an unusually sharp rupture between a sitting American president and the most potent pro-Israel lobbying group, which was founded in 1951 a few years after the birth of Israel.

But the tone of the current dispute is raising concerns among some of Mr. Obama’s allies who say it is a new low in relations between Aipac and the White House. They say they are worried that, in working to counter Aipac’s tactics and discredit its claims about the nuclear accord with Iran, the president has gone overboard in criticizing the group and like-minded opponents of the deal.

“It’s somewhat dangerous, because there’s a kind of a dog whistle here that some people are going to hear as ‘it’s time to go after people,’ and not just rhetorically,” said David Makovsky, a former Middle East adviser for the Obama administration and now an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Studies. But Aipac’s claims, he said, had been just as overheated. “There’s almost a bunker mentality on both sides.”

Mr. Obama’s advisers strongly disputed the suggestion that he used coded language to single out Aipac when he said in his American University speech that “many of the same people who argued for the war in Iraq are now making the case against the Iran nuclear deal.”

“This has nothing to do with anybody’s identity; this is a policy difference about the Iranian nuclear program,” said Benjamin J. Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser for strategic communications. “We don’t see this as us versus them,” Mr. Rhodes added, predicting that the White House and Aipac would work closely in the future on other matters, including Israeli security. “This is a family argument, not a permanent rupture.”

But for now, the struggle is critical for Mr. Obama, who regards the agreement — which lifts some sanctions against Iran in exchange for restrictions aimed at restraining its ability to obtain a nuclear weapon — as a landmark achievement. He is fighting to rally enough Democratic support to preserve the deal ahead of a September vote on it in the Republican-led Congress. Aipac is working to deny him that by leaning hard on Democrats, including Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, who on Thursday announced his opposition.

The group had sent 60 activists to Mr. Schumer’s office to lobby him last week, while Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran, (how about "Citizens for a Nuclear Free 'Israel”? — Hoffman) an offshoot Aipac formed to run at least $25 million in advertising against the deal, ran television spots in New York City. As Mr. Schumer deliberated, he spoke with Aipac leaders, but also with representatives of the pro-Israel group J Street, which supports the deal.

The White House courted Mr. Schumer heavily even though officials always suspected he would oppose the agreement, they said Friday. “I don’t know if the administration’s been outlobbied,” Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said Thursday before Mr. Schumer’s announcement. “We certainly have been outspent.”

Besides individual meetings with Mr. Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry and Wendy R. Sherman, the chief negotiator, Mr. Schumer had three hourlong meetings with members of the negotiating team, who answered 14 pages of questions from him.

Mr. Schumer hashed out further details with Mr. Kerry, Ms. Sherman and Energy Secretary Ernest J. Moniz in a recent dinner at the State Department. Mr. Obama, in the White House meeting with Aipac leaders, sharply challenged the group after one of its representatives, Lee Rosenberg, a former fund-raising bundler for Mr. Obama’s 2008 campaign, said the administration was characterizing opponents of the deal as warmongers, according to several people present, who would speak about the private meeting only on the condition of anonymity. The meeting included some 20 leaders of other Jewish organizations.

“Words have consequences, especially when it’s authority figures saying them, and it’s not their intent, perhaps, but we know from history that they become manipulated,” said Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, repeating a concern he had raised directly with Mr. Obama during the closed-door session. “Of all political leaders,” Mr. Hoenlein added, “he certainly should be the most sensitive to this.”

Mr. Obama told the visitors he would be careful with his remarks, but quickly pointed out that Aipac was spending $20 million to campaign against the agreement and was sending hundreds of activists to Capitol Hill armed with what he called inaccuracies to persuade lawmakers to reject the deal. He complained about advertising that portrayed him as an appeaser by comparing him to Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister who signed the Munich Agreement with Adolf Hitler in 1938.

Aipac says it is not behind those ads, (who is? -- Hoffman) and that its arguments with Mr. Obama are about the deal, not him. And the group denies it lobbied for the war in Iraq, on which it did not take an official position (what was its “unofficial” position? -- Hoffman). “This critical national security debate is certainly not about an organization but rather about a deal which we believe will fail to block an Iranian nuclear weapon and will fuel terrorism,” said Marshall Wittmann, an Aipac spokesman. “We hope that all those who are engaged in this debate will avoid questioning motives and employing any ad hominem attacks.”

The friction between Mr. Obama and Aipac over the Iran deal has been building for months. Last week, as Mr. Obama made his way back from Africa on Air Force One, White House officials learned that Aipac would be flying 700 members from across the country to Washington to pressure their members of Congress to reject the deal. Mr. Obama’s team asked to brief the group at the White House, and was told instead to send a representative to the downtown Washington hotel where the activists were gathering before their Capitol Hill visits, according to people familiar with the private discussions.

Ms. Sherman; Adam J. Szubin, the Treasury official who handles financial sanctions; and Denis R. McDonough, the White House chief of staff, all made presentations to the group, but were barred from taking questions to further explain it. White House officials said they were told from the start there would be no questions, while Aipac supporters said that they would have allowed questions but that there was no time.

Whatever the case, Mr. Obama took offense and later complained at the White House to Aipac leaders that they had refused to allow Ms. Sherman and other members of his team to confront the “inaccuracies” being spread about the agreement, leaving him to defend the deal to wavering lawmakers who had been fed misinformation about it...

End quote from the NY Times. Jonathan Weisman and Jennifer Steinhauer contributed reporting.

Read more at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/08/world/middleeast/fears-of-lasting-rift-as-obama-battles-pro-israel-group-on-iran.html

Even though I am a Catholic, Rev. Herman Otten, editor of the traditional Lutheran (LCMS) newspaper Christian News, frequently publishes my columns in his newspaper. My writing is not considered for publication in “traditional” Catholic newspapers such The Remnant and Catholic Family News. The online “traditional” Catholic blog Rorate Caeli has blocked us from even re-tweeting their material. The American Conservative magazine, with a preponderance of Catholics on its editorial staff, refuses to carry paid advertisements for our book Usury in Christendom: The Mortal Sin that Was and Now is Not. The John Birch Society, led by “traditional” Catholics John McManus and Bill Jasper, will not allow us to advertise our books in their magazine or on their website.

The only occasions that I have spoken in public on the subject of usury have been at Protestant-sponsored meetings. Judith Sharpe in Virginia, who does not publish a newspaper or magazine, but helps to organize a yearly Catholic forum, is one of our few contacts in the “traditional” Catholic world who does invite us.

I’m not complaining — I consider all of these boycotts and bans self-indicting and in some respects, comical, in light of the red meat rhetoric these groups dispense to their naive supporters. The supposed "leaders of the Conservative movement in America” are too timid to accept our advertisements or to print our columns. Certain Lutherans possess that courage, among them Pastor Otten. Without courage we are lost. Otten knows it. Many conservative Catholic publishers do not. Should I conceal this fact?

Over the years the conservative Lutheran Christian News has regularly reprinted columns by Catholic pundit Joseph Sobran and Catholic Bishop Richard Williamson. Furthermore, his newspaper has published some of the most extensive critical analyses of the Babylonian Talmud (by the late Charles D. Provan, a brilliant and tireless Scripture scholar), and of the claims of homicidal gas chambers in Auschwitz. Pastor Otten has been severely persecuted by elements of the hierarchy of the Lutheran church in America. Yet, his base of support among Lutheran people and other Christians of good will, is intact. His parishioners in Missouri have also maintained their fidelity to him. He operates a large summer Bible camp attended by dozens of youths. All this is testimony to the fact that if we are courageous in a cause for God, we have nothing and no one to fear. That is a lesson many “Christian Conservative leaders” have yet to learn.

2. David Irving’s Speech in London

77-year-old British historian David Irving gave a speech July 24 in London to an audience of 120 at the four-star Rembrandt hotel. His subject was the perfidy of Winston Churchill and a correction of received opinion concerning the standard account of the Nazi bombing of Britain, Rotterdam and Guernica. I have had the privilege of being acquainted with Mr. Irving since 1985 and have heard him speak many times. His London talk last month is among his best. He was more relaxed and his mischievous sense of humor was spontaneous and refreshing in light of what he has endured (more than a year in prison in Austria for a speech much like the one he gave July 24; impoverishment, physical assaults and relentless libel in the media).

The meretricious movie industry is doing a film on his famous legal battle with Judaic academic Deborah Lipstadt. She will be portrayed by the beautiful gentile Hollywood movie star Hilary Swank. To say that Lipstadt looks nothing like Swank is the understatement of the year. (This fits a long-standing Hollywood pattern of having Judaic heroines played by non-Judaic actresses). The part of Mr. Irving will be played by Tom Wilkinson.

In the course of his speech last month Irving commended the RAF crews that flew the bombers over Germany and even advocated honors for the RAF’s Chief Air Marshal Sir Arthur Harris. I disagree with Mr. Irving’s admiration for Harris. Nevertheless, he furnished important facts that deflate the historical myth that Churchill was “reluctantly goaded” by Harris into the criminal saturation bombing of German cities. In fact, as Irving shows, this titanic war crime was Churchill’s brainchild. David provided revisionist information on the German bombing of Guernica and Rotterdam and the Allied incineration of Dresden, the German city which was the subject of one of his early bestsellers.

The malicious British press, which makes the Wall Street Journal look like Little Bo Peep’s gazette in comparison, dripping with venom, lied with customary indifference to reality concerning what Irving said. The odious Daily Mail, in a headline in its Sunday edition, stated: “David Irving tells secret rally ‘the RAF are war criminals.” Actually, Irving said precisely the opposite. Moreover, the “rally” was only “secret” (private) out of concern for the need to evade attacks by Communist or Zionist terrorists.

It is gratifying to see Irving is still at it, wittier and feistier than ever, obviously having a ball defying the enemies of truth and still with something important to say. The astoundingly obtuse, Churchill-as-Sage-of Western-Civilization folderol remains a fixture of the American Right in bastions like Hillsdale College. We may disagree with Irving on any number of historical subjects but when it comes to the Churchill legend, he is the most effective demolition expert living. Though they often contest Irving’s opinions, the sight of the continuing insubordinate truculence of elderly fighters for World War II veritas in addition to Irving, such as Professors Arthur Butz and Robert Faurisson, sustains an incandescence in what would otherwise be darkness. Can we do any less?